


Cold Comfort

by Skitty_the_Great



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 02:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skitty_the_Great/pseuds/Skitty_the_Great
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meg, fearful for Castiel's safety after she sees the angels falling, seeks out the boys who, rather unfortunately, are certain Cas has died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Comfort

Three weeks had passed since the sky had rained fire and angel feathers. Three weeks and the brothers hadn't heard from Castiel. They could only assume one thing, and it didn't make either of them very happy. With all of the pain that had flown between the three of them, there was still a bond of love and family. They mourned him as they would have a lot brother, but they could do no more than that. Their lives didn't lend themselves to moments of weakness and their grief, while strong, could not be dealt with. So they buried it. They buried it deep, and did their best to keep fighting, keep working, keep moving towards whatever undefined goal the fates had set out for them. They'd failed to close the gates of hell. They'd failed to save their fallen brother. They'd simply failed.

Dean had gone on a supply run the night Meg showed up at the bunker. He was drinking again, more than usual. Sam was forcibly reminded of the weeks following Bobby's death and how Dean had hidden at the bottom of the bottle. He hadn't blamed him then, though he'd been worried, and he didn't blame him now. Still, he was glad his brother wasn't there. He and the demon had never been on the best of terms and seeing her now, after everything that had happened...well...he doubted Dean would have been in a very hospitable mood. Sam stood in the doorway to the bunker, having responded to the insistent pounding the door had taken with a shotgun in hand, with a completely godsmacked expression on his face.

"Meg?" he said uncertainly. "What are you doing here? How are you even here?" He lowed the gun a trifle, not trusting exactly, but willing to meet her halfway.

"You gonna let a girl in, or keep her standing out in the cold?" she quipped, pushing past him without an invitation. She strode into the bunker with purposeful steps, leaving him behind in befuddled silence. Pausing in the main room, she turned, as though looking for something. Sam stepped into the room behind her, his brow furrowed in confusion.

"You mind telling me how you even found us?" he snapped, a bit irritated at her presumption.

Meg smiled slyly at him, her eyes still scanning the room, looking into the shadows, searching for something or someone.

"You boys drive the same damn car all over the country and you don't expect it to be traceable? I mean really, Sam. You don't even try." Her expression grew cloudy as she finished her inspection of the room. "Where is everyone?" she demanded, unreasonably harsh.

"Uh, Dean is out," Sam stammered, his gun hanging limply in his hand. Meg was acting strange, in his opinion, even for her. "Kevin's probably asleep. He does that a lot lately. Meg, are you really just going to stand there and pretend there's nothing weird about you showing up? I saw you die, for one thing."

For a moment, she was silent, her expression turned inward. He wasn't sure what caused that expression. Was it his question, or was it something else. Then she smiled, in an unpleasant way.

"You saw Crowley stab me," she corrected.

"Yeah, with an angel blade. That's pretty fatal to demons." Sam was quickly losing his patience, but he placed the gun on the table between them, all the same. After their last conversation, he somehow didn't see her as a threat any longer. He knew he should have. She was still dangerous. She had possessed him for Christ's sake. But something in her had changed, and he was the only one who really knew what that was.

"Funny thing about Demons, Sam," she snapped, sounding irritated. "We were human once, just like you. Can't kill a human soul, you know. And if you're as sadistic as Crowley, you know how to hold onto one. You really think he was going to let his favorite toy go that easily?" She sounded tough, angry, but her face didn't match it. Whatever had happened to her after he and Dean had run, he knew it hadn't been pleasant. Knowing Crowley, it had probably been worse than mere torture.

"Sorry," he supplied, his voice soft. "We should have gone back for you."

Meg laughed, throwing her head back and turning away from him.

"I'm not even going to dignify that with a response," she snapped, scanning the room a final time. "You said Dean was out?" she asked instead.

"Yeah. He'll probably be gone awhile." He didn't add that his brother was most likely at a bar, drowning his sorrows, and unlikely to return for several hours. It wasn't her business, and he didn't enjoy thinking about it.

"Where's Castiel?" she asked, her tone a touch too indifferent to be believable.

Sam hesitated before answering. He alone knew why she would ask that. Now he knew why she'd sought them out, tracked them down here despite the fact that being with them as probably the least safest place for her to be even on a good day. She'd come looking for Cas. More than likely she'd seen the angels falling, put two and two together, and spent the next few weeks tracking them. She hadn't been looking for him and his brother. She'd been looking for the most likely place for Cas to show up. He didn't have the heart to tell her what they'd already accepted. He wasn't sure how she'd react, and, more to the point, he didn't want to be responsible for that kind of pain, even in an enemy. It didn't seem fair.

His silence told her enough.

"You don't know, do you?" she asked, her voice quietly menacing. She had turned slightly towards him, but her eyes did not meet his.

"We don't," he said at last. "We looked. We did. But there as nothing to find. Meg," he hesitated again, worrying of the familiarity with which he said her name, "it's not likely that he survived whatever made the angels fall. Or, if he did, he's not coming back." The last, he tacked on with what counted as hope in his life these days. It was the thing they could cling to for comfort in the loss of yet another family member.

Meg was silent for a long moment. Her body radiated tension and danger. Sam's hand inched involuntarily towards the gun once more.

"You didn't look hard enough," she said at last. She moved with jerky steps, pushing past him on her way back towards the door. She'd barely been there a few minutes, and already she was running from them. He'd been right. Of course he'd been right. The only reason she would have voluntarily sought them out was for the one person she might have a chance at loving. He couldn't even begin to understand how hard that might be for her. They'd shared a mind once. It had been confusing and difficult and she'd kept him locked out of most of what made up her thoughts, but he'd still known her, as no other creature ever could. And knowing that, he also knew how dangerous she was likely to become now.

"Meg, wait," he moved to intercept her, an instantly regrettable action. Her eyes slid to black and her hand came up, blasting him back against the wall with shocking force. She held him there with her power, her lips pulled back from her teeth in a grimace of rage and...was it pain? She walked towards him with slow steps.

"You could have saved him. You always save people. It's what you do," she ground out. "You're the good guys, the heroes. But you couldn't even protect the only one of you worth a damn." She was close to him now, and his breathing came in short, ragged gasps as his chest attempted to expand against the pressure she was putting on him. "I wouldn't be surprised if you just left him to rot, like you left me. That's all anyone is to you two. Rotten meat to be tossed aside." Her hand came to rest on his chest, adding a physical touch to the invisible force that held him. "You're pathetic," she spat out.

Something was happening. Sam could feel the force that held him loosening slightly around the edges. His arms felt less pressure, the his chest, until finally the only force holding him against the wall was her tiny hand, and the mere closeness of her. Her eyes stayed black, but her face was contorted into something almost like grief. Her body jerked in odd ways, and at first he didn't know what he was seeing. Then it occurred to him. Her body, the human body she possessed, was reacting an emotion that she, as a demon, could not react to. Her body racked with sobs that could not force their way past the demonic presence that inhabited it. If she'd been human, she likely would have dissolved into tears right in front of him. But she was not, so she did not. Her face remained frozen in that strange look of pain, black eyes slowly fading back to brown as she looked at him.

Instinctively, he lowered his arms and brought them around her. He knew she could kill him for the simple act of touching her, and maybe she would. But she'd opened up to him once, and he thought maybe she might be willing to accept what comfort he could give. He felt her fingers clench against the fabric of his shirt, but she did not fight him as he drew her into his chest. She was so small, he almost had to bend over to hold her. Her body continued to shake, out of her control, though she remained silent and tense beneath his touch. He stood there, holding her, not knowing what else to do. What comfort could you really offer a demon who grieved for an angel? What two creatures had ever been in such a position in the history of either of their races? Sam laid his cheek against the top of her head and held on. If she killed him for his kindness, well...he supposed there were worse causes to die for.


End file.
